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'Runners topple Bobcats
Chime has tremendous game as he scores 27 points, 14 retx)unds
Sports, page 8
i\/lysteries of the i\/iideast
UTSA professor brings wonders of the Mideast bacl( from fellowship tour
Features, paga 4
Encore!
ACT reopens as Josephine Theater
Arts & Entertainment, page 6
January 24,1995
Volunfie18, Number 2
St HvirjG IHE Univlrsity of Tlx;\s at San Antonio Community
Forty-six percent of freshmen leave
UTSA retention, demographics reveal nontraditional trends
By Ryan Lambrecht
Editor-in-Chief
UTSA often is called a nontradi¬ tional university, and statistics recently compiled by the office of institutional analysis (OIA) support this character- : ization.
Among the office's many findings is that 46 percent of freshmen do not re¬ tum to UTSA the following fall semes¬ ter, 65 percent of UTSA students are employed, 38 percent of students work over 20 hours a week, and many stu¬ dents attend UTSA sporadically.
According to Dr. Terri Leal, director of OIA, UTSA's nontraditional trends arise from its being a metropolitan uni¬ versity. Unlike research universities such as UT Austin and Texas A&M, UTSA students are often bound to the city by their jobs, family, or both. As a result of being bound to their location, UTSA students tend to be older, mem¬ bers of a minority, students who do not attend school in succeeding semesters, and students who take several years to graduate.
Nontraditional students are defined as members of a minority or students over 24 years of age, and by this defini¬ tion 75 percent of UTSA consists of nontraditional students. Broken down, half of UTSA's student body is over 24 years of age and 40 percent is an ethnic minority or non-resident alien.
Due to UTSA's nontraditional de¬ mographics, UTSA experiences low re¬ tention and graduation rates when judged by standards set for research universi¬ ties.
One example of low UTSA retention by research university standards is that 46 percent of freshmen do not retum to UTSA the following fall semester. Among the freshmen who do not retum to UTSA, 68 percent transfer to other universities or community colleges in Texas. From the students who transfer to other universities, 51 percent come back to UTSA at a later date. From the students who transfer to junior colleges.
S3 percent attended Alamo Community Colleges.
According to Leal, most of these freshmen should not be considered fail¬ ures on UTSA's part since most transfer to other schools and many of them rettim to UTSA.
"We shouldn't be counting those 68 percent [of freshmen who transfer to other schools] as failures because they're going on to schools somewhere, and possibly we were the ones that helped them do this," Leal said. "That's part of retention that no one wants to give credit for, but we're saying UTSA should be given credit for it. For these students we have served as a beginning school which helps them start out and then go on to other schools."
Calculating UTSA's retention rate is complex since many students transfer to other colleges and then later retum to UTSA, and because many students do not attend school in succeeding semes¬ ters. Although 46 percent of freshmen do not retum the following fall, 73 per¬ cent of UTSA freshmen eventually are enrolled in three or more semesters at UTSA.
The average UTSA student, along with being a nontraditional student, also attends in a nontraditional manner.
"A typical freshman might come to us and then after a year decide they want to go to San Antonio College, so they would go there for a year or two, then come back to us as a juniOT and finish some courses," Leal said. "There are going to be some blank semesters in their schooling because they may not have enough tuition money, not have the time because their schedule or ajob doesn't allow it, or not have a mnning car to take them to school.
"These are all just incidentals, but they really do contribute to whether people come and register to school ev¬ ery single semester. Sometimes stu¬ dents can't go to school every semester, so we will see them taking six or eight years to graduate."
The amount of transfers and intermit-
Number of semesters attended by freshmen who first enrolled at UTSA from 1985 to 1989
.1
1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200
— cMKiTjinor^tDoio—CMio^inor^oDOi
Number of semesters attended between now and when first enrolled
What this graph indicates is that although 46 percent of freshmen do not retum to UTSA the following fall, eventually 73 percent take more than three semesters at UTSA. ....
Minority enrollment
American Indian/Other
Hispanic 30 percent
Asian
3 percent 1 percent
Biacl( 3 percent
White
62 percent
Source: Office of Institutional Analysis/
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tent attendance has a significant effect on UTSA's graduation rate. From a group of 1,426 students who were fresh¬ men in fall 1987, 25 percent graduated, from UTSA by fall 1993. From the same group, 101 were still attending UTSA in spring 1994.
"The nontraditional students are what really drive these trends of the metro¬ politan university," Leal said. "We're not looking at people who are just col¬ lege students: we're serving people who are members ofa family they support or help support. These are |)eople who have other lives who on the side go to school."
Library survey discovers wanted materiais unavailable
students fix a flat tire on Friday aftemoon in parking iot one.
In March of 1994, the UTSA libraiy surveyed library users to measure the amount of success users have in finding materials they look for. The study found that 35 percent of materials searched for were not found, an increase .of five per¬ cent in comparison with a study done two years ago.
Researchers expected this result be¬ cause of the library's cuts in serial sub¬ scriptions and book purchases over the past two years. The library has made fewer purchases due to a $24,000 decrease in funds for library books and periodicals and due to the rapidly increasing costs of books andjoumals.
The materials availability sur¬ vey was given to people using library finding aids such as the Online System or printed indexes ^-» and abstracts. The 256 library users who completed the survey looked for a total of 692 books, joumals, or other library materials. Surveyed users found 447 items, or approximately 65 percent of the materials they looked for. The refer¬ ence and access services staff investi¬ gated each survey form within minutes of its being tumed in, and they searched forevery title not found to determine die
specific cause.
Of the materials patrons looked for but did not find, 35 percent were not owned by the library and seven percent were not found because they were al¬ ready charged out to someone else. In every case where faculty did not find material it was because the library did not own it. In 30 jjercent of student cases, students failed to find properly shelved materials or made errors in con¬ sulting the library catalog, which led
"Solving this problem [the library not owning materials students request] will be difficult unless additional funds are made avail¬ able" —Margaret Joseph
them to believe that UTSA did not own the materials they wanted.
These results are disturbing in two areas, according to Margaret Joseph, who is the assistant director for public ser\ ces of the UTSA library and is responsible for administering the sur¬ vey. "Every instance where a student or faculty member failed to find something that they needed is of concem to us in the
library, whatever the reason. No library these days expects to own everything that its users might need, but 35 percent seems high. We would be happier to have the material not owned closer to 20 percent.
"Solving this problem will be diffi¬ cult unless additional funds are made available to the library for collection development or for full-text access to a wide variety of databases. The problem that fhistrates librarians the most is when 5 the library owns the material the student wanted and it was avail¬ able on the shelf and yet the student still did not find it."
The library staff has recently increased its efforts to triiin stu¬ dents to use the Online System and other electronic databases. ¦¦¦¦^" "We have more than doubled the number of classes offered and the number of students reached in the past year, but we still only reached about 11 percent of the student population," Jo¬ seph said. "Students have the opportu¬ nity to sign up for our classes but only a small percentage of students take ad¬ vantage of the programs offered. The rate of change in the library has acceler- cont. on pg 3
National Estimated Starting Salaries for New College Graduates
Chemical Engineering $40,689
Mechanical Engineering $35,713
Electrical Engineering $35,302
Computer Science $32,762
Nursing $30,078
Chemistry $28,551
Accounting $28,022
Physics $27,330
Financial Administration $26,838
Mathematics $26,630
Marketing $24,780
Business Administration $23,950
Education $22,898
Social Science $22,600
Advertising $21,870
Communications $21,860
Liberal Arts $21,124
Average for Graduate Degree
MBA $39,507
Ph.D. $38,686
Masters $35,934
Job outlook for college grads brightens
By Marco Buscaglia
College Press Service
Brace yourself, college seniors: there's good news on the job front.
After years of doom-and-gloom fore¬ casts throughout the early 1990s, the employment outlook for college gradu¬ ates finally may be replaced by brighter skies.
"The graduates of 1995 should be entering the best job market in the past four years," said Patrick Scheetz, direc¬ tor of the Collegiate Employment Re¬ search Institute It Michigan State Uni¬ versity. "Although it'sa modest increase, it looks like we're coming out ofa dark period for employment."
Scheetz and his associates have re¬ leased a new study based on surveys of 545 companies. He said that the hiring ofthis year's graduates will increase 5.9
percent over last year, making 1995 the second consecutive year for gains in employment. In the four years before la<!t year's I. I percent increase, new jobs for college graduates dropped by 30 per¬ cent.
Thomas Oh, senior research analyst at Hanigan Consulting Group in New York City, agrees.
"Companies are getting oack to hir¬ ing, the people they didn't hire in the early '90s," said Oh. "This year's col¬ lege graduates have good reason to be more optimistic than ever."
Oh said 29 of the 100 companies he surveyed indicated that they'll increase their hiring of college graduates this spring, while 65 companies will hire the same number of students as last year. Only five companies said they will de¬ crease the number of college graduates they'll be hiring.
In l994,thenumberof college gradu¬ ates hired rose by 8.4 percent. The num¬ ber this year should be even higher. Oh said.
"Students getting their degrees in 1995 face a much better job market than graduates did a few years ago," said Oh. "They will be hearing from mort than one company."
That continues an upward trend ftom 1994, when college graduates entered an improved job market. "It's kind of anticlimactic when you graduate and theii have to wait six months to get a job," says Ron Fi'le, a 1994 graduate of the University of Wisconsin- Whitewater. "When I was a sophomore and junior, all I ever read was about how horrible the job market was. I thought I was going to get buried."
But Fille was able to find ajob within one month of his graduation, thanks to
an early job search and a major that is in demand. "I was one of the lucky ones who majored in computer science," he says. "There were a lot of companies hiring computer geeks like me to help with technical support."
The upwards swing of the 1994 hir¬ ing season should continue into 1995, but graduates shouldn't expect (o leap into that $50,000 a year job right away. "Employers are reminding students that they still have some leaming to do and that they need to show positive perfor¬ mance on the job," said Scheetz. "A lot of times students think job advancement when they should think job performance. Students proved themselves in college, now they have to prove themselves all over again."
Scheetz said that employers will be looking to hire graduates with signifi- cont on pg 3